Tuesday, October 05, 2004

Season of records

3 high profile records were broken this season. Everyone is aware that Ichiro set the single season hit record, finishing the season with an amazing 262 hits. Also well known is that Barry Bonds broke his year old record for walks, with an incredible 232! That figure is so unreal, that I really have a hard time grasping what it means. If you cut that number in half, it would still lead the league in almost any other season! That’s like someone hitting 90 hr or having 250 rbi. The only other figure in recent baseball history that I think compares is the 130 stolen bases Rickey Henderson put up in 1982.

Lastly, most people are probably also aware that Adam Dunn set the single season strikeout record with 195. I’m surprised that nobody has commented on the strange symmetry of these 3 records being broken in the same year!

Besides the trifecta of well known records, there were several other records that were broken or nearly broken, all of which by Ichiro and Bonds. Here are the ones I know of, off the top of my head:

Broken records:
Most singles – 225, I. Suzuki
Highest OBP - .609, B. Bonds
Highest OPS – 1.422, B. Bonds
Most plate appearances – 762, I. Suzuki

Nearly broken records:
Most times reached base – 376, B. Bonds (2nd all time to B. Ruth, 1923, 379)
Most at bats – 704, I. Suzuki (2nd all time to W. Wilson, 1980, 705)

Lastly, I wanted to make note of 2 players who had singularly remarkable and historic second halves of 2004. The first is the previously mentioned Ichiro. Check out his second half:

AB - 333
H - 143
Ave. - .429
OBP - .465
SLG - .517

Wow! 143 hits in the second half (76 games)! That projects to 302 over a full season! And check out the .429 batting average. Those are numbers we haven’t seen since the 1920’s. Ichiro truly had a season for the ages.

The other second half I wanted to spotlight belongs to Johan Santana:

GS - 15
W - 13
L - 0
ERA - 1.21
IP - 104.1
K - 129
Opp.Ave. - .149

Those numbers haven’t been seen since, well, since I stopped playing M-Network baseball on my Commodore 64. It will be interesting to see if this represents a new level of performance for these players, or if they simply had coincidental once in a lifetime streaks.

posted by bkopec @ 2:21 PM   5 comments